2010-10-22

Something Lost in Translation?

President Ma Ying-Jeou (馬英九) really cares about Chinese culture. According to the Taipei Times President touts Chinese culture, President Ma is of the opinion that traditional Chinese characters are more difficult to learn than simplified ones. Full-form characters (so-called traditional characters) are easier to remember because they give you more clues to help you remember them. They are just much more difficult to write with a pen. But these days, since the new generation uses keyboards and mobile phones, it does not make any difference writing full-form (整體）or simplified characters.

President Ma put it very simply : "While traditional script was more difficult to learn, it was harder to forget, whereas simplified characters were easier to learn, but they were hard to remember." Huh?

Ma also said he was not "against simplified characters." He'd better not be if he wants to convince the Chinese government to stop pointing missiles at Taiwan. Imagine the headline in the Global Times: "China has added 50 missiles pointed at Taiwan to defend simplified characters." As usual, President Ma is eager to make peace with China.

I'll take this opportunity to call for the suppression of the wrong term "Traditional Characters." Every scholar or serious student of Chinese knows that many so-called simplified characters have been used for as many as 2000 years and that many full-form characters are more recent than the "simplified ones."

The MRT in Taipei has announcements in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and English (I pity visitors who feel slighted by Chinese announcements being three times as long as English ones). It's about time that MRT signage use these four languages as well. Maybe Ma has an opinion on what Characters should be used. He has called for full-form characters to be used on the mainland "juxtaposing the two systems in its elementary and high school textbooks." President Ma, PLEASE make a call for juxtaposing Taiwanese and Hakka next to Mandarin and English. Not to mention Truku or Paiwan and other native languages in their respective areas.

Or maybe I don't understand your notion of "new climate in cultural development."